














COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 











Is the World Growing 
Worse or Better? 


By 

Rev. Wm. McKinley, D. D. 



CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 
NEW YORK: EATON AND MAINS 



A'* 



JENNINGS 


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• • 


©CI.A293911 



IS THE WORLD GROWING WORSE 
OR BETTER? 







IS THE WORLD GROWING WORSE 
OR BETTER? 



tHIS question is not merely specu 


lative, but vital and practical. 


Our answer to it will determine 
largely our attitude toward the world and 
our conduct in it. 

At first sight the world seems to be 
growing worse. Evil is obtrusive and, 
while it seeks secrecy, finds publicity. 

A single crime will give a man more no¬ 
toriety than a whole lifetime of virtue. 
Our evil deeds and misdeeds are published 
here, but much of the good we do is re¬ 
corded in heaven only. And there is 
evil enough in sight to alarm us. 

Ignorance, error, falsehood, illusions, 
and delusions innumerable darken our 
minds and bewilder our reason. 

Deceit, dishonesty, hypocrisy, white 
lies and black lies, slander, vanity, os- 


5 



6 Is the World Growing 


tentation, arrogance, intemperance, sensu¬ 
ality, profanity, infidelity, and selfishness 
with all its vulgar vices corrupt and de¬ 
grade society. Political corruption, brib¬ 
ery, perjury, personal and partisan poli¬ 
tics in place of patriotism, mean and mer¬ 
cenary appeals to what is base, the unholy 
alliance of law-makers and law-breakers, 
the increase of crime, and the decrease of 
justice shake our faith in democracy and 
self-government. The extremes of pov¬ 
erty and wealth, want on one side, luxury 
on the other, create contrasts which beget 
envy, jealousy, strife, the war of classes 
and masses with all its cruelties and 
crimes. In the realm of religion, bigotry, 
fanaticism, formalism, pharisaism, worldli¬ 
ness, zeal without knowledge and knowl¬ 
edge without zeal, divide and distract 
the spiritual forces which united might 
conquer the world for Christ. It must 
be confessed there is a dark side to our 
question and facts enough on which a 
partial philosophy may build a doctrine 
of despair. But these are not all the facts 
nor the larger part of them. 

In human affairs, as in nature, we have 


Worse or Better? 


7 


day and night, summer and winter, 
growth and decay, life and death, and 
these opposites make one great whole 
which, rightly interpreted, inspires hope 
and not despair. Through all the changes 
in nature we see a general tendency to¬ 
ward improvement and progress. Through 
all the ages in which the primeval fire mist 
was cooling and condensing into suns and 
planets, through the long and later era 
when the continents rose slowly from 
the seas, through the numberless years 
in which vast vegetable growths absorbed 
the poisonous gases from the murky air 
and formed the coal measures with which 
we now warm and light our homes, through 
the unmeasured time in which huge and 
uncouth forms of animal life crawled 
over the morasses and roamed through the 
wildernesses of the early world—through 
all these countless changes one great 
purpose pervades and controls them all. 
The universe is slowly emerging from 
chaos into cosmos, and our plastic planet 
is becoming fitted for the abode of man. 
And since man came, the Power that 
prepared the world for him has been 


8 Is the World Growing 


working in and through him to make it 
a better world. 

Whether a perfect world and perfect 
man could have been made at once is a 
question beyond the reach of our facul¬ 
ties; but we know that it is not the method 
of nature nor of the God manifested in 
nature. Man is fitted to his environment 
and his environment to him, and 
both are imperfect, but slowly advancing 
toward perfection. Many things called 
evil rightly used become relatively good. 
Our pains, perils, and privations met and 
conquered are things by which we are 
educated, disciplined, and developed up 
and out of animalism and sensuality into 
manhood and spirituality. All our vir¬ 
tues are born of our needs. Our wants 
create our industries, arts, sciences, phi¬ 
losophies, literature, religion, and civiliza¬ 
tion; and in a deep sense it is true of all 
men, as it was of the greatest Man, that 
we are “made perfect through suffering.” 

The same law of progress is manifest 
in natural history and in human history. 
Here, as there, progress is not in constant 
ratios or straight lines, but with action 


Worse or Better? 


9 


and reaction, fluctuation and variation. 
Cities, States, nations, kingdoms, rise 
and fall; all human institutions, social, 
civil, political, and religious, have their 
periods of growth and decay, of progres¬ 
sion and retrogression. On all the glory 
of earth there is no defense. All things 
that belong to time are mutable and 
mortal. In the human, as in the natural 
world, there are storms and catastrophes 
which threaten to destroy all things. 

Gigantic crimes, cruel wars, tragic revo¬ 
lutions, shock and shake the nations. 
Families, tribes, races, dynasties, pass 
and perish; but humanity survives and 
prospers and marches on toward larger 
light and loftier destinies. 

All the great changes in human history 
have, on the whole, been changes for the 
better. The Assyrian and Babylonian 
monarchies were better than the isolated, 
warring clans that precede them. The 
Persian Empire was an improvement on 
Assyria and Babylon. The Macedonian 
Empire was better still, spreading Greek 
culture and civilization over the semi- 
barbarous populatons of Asia. The Ro- 


io Is the World Growing 


man dominion, greatest of all, was the 
best of all. 

The Roman at his best was the best 
type of manhood, except the best Hebrew, 
the world had yet seen, heroic, patriotic, 
capable of self-sacrifice and, after his 
fashion, virtuous and religious. To him 
we owe the reign of law instead of brute 
force. It was the Roman who said: 
“There is a law which men have not made 
and can not unmake. It is not one thing 
in Rome and another in Athens, one thing 
to-day and another to-morrow; but in 
Rome and Athens, here and there and 
everywhere and evermore it is the same, 
because God its Author is everywhere and 
evermore the same.” 

It was under Roman rule the idea of 
human brotherhood first emerged. It 
was a Roman who said, “I am a man 
and nothing human is alien to me.” 
Rome brought the conquered nations to¬ 
gether in one great commonwealth, and 
so made possible universal peace and the 
gates of the temple of Janus were shut 
when the Prince of Peace was born. 

The master minds, the empire builders, 


Worse or Better? u 

build better than they know. Inspired 
by their own ambitions, they unconsciously 
execute the purposes of a will greater 
and wiser than their own. Nebuchad¬ 
nezzar, Cyrus, Alexander, and Caesar were 
preparing the way of the Lord when they 
thought and sought only to prepare their 
own way. 

The great races, Hebrew, Greek, and Ro¬ 
man, as nations, have passed, but all that 
was best in them abides. 

The religion of the Hebrew, the cul¬ 
ture of the Greek, the law of the Roman, 
are the foundation stones of modern 
civilization. The survival of the fittest 
and the conservation of force are laws of 
the spiritual as well as of the natural 
world. The destruction of Jerusalem 
seemed to the early Christians a catas¬ 
trophe for which there was no compensa¬ 
tion; but it liberated Christianity from 
bondage to Judaism and made it a cos¬ 
mopolitan and not a provincial religion. 

When Roman valor and virtue died 
in the lap of luxury and licentiousness, 
the barbarians overran the empire and 
swept away the material splendors and 


12 Is the World Growing 


moral rottenness of that gorgeous pagan¬ 
ism, and so made room for a higher civil¬ 
ization in which Christ, and not Caesar, 
should be supreme. 

When the French Revolution burst 
all bounds, closed the churches, banished 
the priests, beheaded the king, and en¬ 
gulfed Church and State in common ruin, 
it seemed that God had abandoned the 
world to atheism and anarchy. But we 
see now that the things thus destroyed were 
evil and corrupt things for which neither 
God nor man had any more use. There 
are times when enormous evils call for 
enormous remedies, when men must fight 
the devil with fire. 

“The French Revolution,” as Carlyle 
says, “was a God’s gospel clad in hell- 
fire,” and came because hell-fire was needed 
to consume the intolerable abuses and 
abominations which had made France a 
Gehenna gorged with centuries of crime 
and corruption. It struck down princes 
and raised up the people. Every poor 
man’s head is safer since the royal heads 
of Charles the Second and Louis the Six¬ 
teenth fell beneath the executioner’s ax. 


Worse or Better? 


i3 


Cromwell, Mirabeau, and Dan ton, regi¬ 
cides and revolutionists, had their rough 
work to do for the world’s welfare. God 
is not so choice of His instruments as our 
fastidious fancies would have Him. He 
permits the wild gusts of human passions 
to rage and roar as if they would blow our 
planet out of its orbit; but He rides upon 
the storm and controls its course and 
makes “fire and hail, stormy wind, and 
dragons of the deep fulfill His word.” 
“Surely the wrath of man shall praise 
Thee and the remainder of wrath shalt 
Thou restrain.” 

From the highest point of view right 
is might and the just cause ultimately 
conquers. Nothing really dies that ought 
to live, and nothing lives long that ought 
to die. The witnesses for the truth may 
be burned at the stake, beheaded on the 
scaffold, or nailed to the cross, but the truth 
can not be burned, beheaded, or cruci¬ 
fied. A lie on the throne is a lie still, 
and truth in a dungeon is truth still, 
and the lie on the throne is on the way to 
defeat, and the truth in the dungeon is 
on the way to victory. No accident of 


14 Is the World Growing 

position can change the essential nature 
of things or the eternal laws which de¬ 
termine their destinies. 

As in nature material atoms and ener¬ 
gies disappear only to reappear in other 
forms and combinations, so in the spiritual 
world the old truth passes into new forms 
of expression to meet new needs and new 
conditions; and those who mistake the 
form for the essence may think the truth 
is lost and the new statement of it false 
and dangerous. But living truth, like 
all other living things, must adjust itself 
to new conditions or become a dead for¬ 
mula. The power of the gospel to adapt 
itself to the changes in human thought 
and in the social and spiritual conditions 
of men is proof of its vitality and di¬ 
vinity. 

When evolution was announced as the 
scientific theory of the process by which 
the universe has come to be what it is, it 
was assailed as an atheistic attempt to 
get rid of God. 

But no process can account for itself. 
In it or behind it must be some Power 
adequate to produce it. This Power be- 


Worse or Better? 


i5 


hind evolution must be self-existent, self- 
sufficient, and all-sufficient, and what is 
this but another name for the Eternal, 
Almighty, All-wise God, in and over all 
things, immanent and transcendant, “God 
over all and blessed for evermore.” 

This is the sane, scientific, rational view 
of evolution harmonizing with common- 
sense, religion and logic, and with the 
deep, enduring, and universal intuitions of 
the wisest and best of mankind. A godless 
universe is an absurdity. Evolution de¬ 
mands an adequate cause as much as im¬ 
mediate creation; and by whatever proc¬ 
ess He works, God is a necessity of our 
reason and our faith from which we can 
not escape without intellectual and spirit¬ 
ual suicide. 

Without claiming for it absolute dem¬ 
onstration, we find in evolution a theory 
which sheds light on things otherwise 
dark and a conception of the universe 
and of God which does not diminish but 
increases their greatness and glory. As 
gravitation shows us that nothing is iso¬ 
lated in space, that one law holds the 
mountains on their bases, the oceans in 


16 Is the World Growing 

their beds, the planets in their orbits, 
rounds the falling raindrops and the 
rolling worlds and, stretching from atom 
to atom and from world to world, holds 
all things together in the unity and beauty 
and beneficence of the great cosmos; so 
evolution shows us that nothing is iso¬ 
lated in time, that through all the ages 
all things are related and correlated, all 
creatures akin and bound together in 
the unity of the Infinite Life which trans¬ 
cends and includes them all. From this 
point of view the Fatherhood of God 
and the brotherhood of man is a truth 
of science as well as of religion. By en¬ 
larging our conception of the universe 
science has enlarged our conception of 
God. 

The Sovereign whose empire includes 
millions of suns and systems, some of 
which are so vast that our earth is but 
an atom in comparison and so remote 
that light, with a velocity of one hundred 
and eighty thousand miles a second, 
takes thousands of years to traverse the 
immensity of space between us and them 
—this God of all worlds in boundless 


Worse or Better? 17 

space and time is a greater God than the 
provincial Deity of Palestine. 

As science has enlarged our ideas of 
God’s works, so scholarship has enlarged 
our views of God’s revelation. The proc¬ 
ess by which the Holy Scriptures have 
come to us is analogous to that by which 
the physical world has come to be what 
it is. Not by immediate fiat, but by 
progressive development, “line upon line 
and precept upon precept,” the inspired 
Word has come to us in accordance with 
spiritual laws as fixed and sure in their 
operation as the laws which govern the 
material world. And with increasing 
knowledge of these laws we have a better 
understanding of the Book which reveals 
them. As the Copernican view of the 
universe makes it more intelligible and 
more interesting than the Ptolemaic view, 
so our modern doctrine of inspiration and 
revelation makes the Bible more in¬ 
teresting and more instructive than the 
mechanical theory of verbal inerrancy 
which made God responsible for all the 
inaccuracies and infelicities of style and 
detail which the human element in the 


i 8 Is the World Growing 


Book made inevitable. The criticism 
which many feared as fatal to faith has 
clarified, strengthened, and enlarged it. 
The Bible has become a bigger and better 
Book. Because it is more human it is 
not less divine, but more divine because 
more human. Like the Supreme Person 
whom it portrays, “the Word is made 
flesh and dwells among us full of grace 
and truth.” 

Our enlarged knowledge of God’s world 
and God’s Word has necessarily modi¬ 
fied our views of many other things. Our 
ideas of incarnation, atonement, regenera¬ 
tion, justification, sanctification, and kin¬ 
dred truths illumined by larger light have 
become more reasonable and more cred¬ 
ible. There is mystery enough left to 
require faith and reverence, but the con¬ 
flict between reason and revelation has 
almost vanished and promises, with more 
light, entirely to disappear. The gospel 
appeals to our heads as well as to our 
hearts, to our reason as well as to our 
faith; it is the wisdom of God as well as 
the power of God; and all honest efforts 
to remove the irrational and irrelevant 


Worse or Better? 


19 


accretions which have gathered about it 
are to be welcomed as helps to its propa¬ 
gation. 

In its long voyage across the sea of 
time, it is not strange that the gospel 
ship had accumulated some barnacles, 
and the scholars and critics who have 
helped us to scrape them off are friends 
to whom we owe our thanks and not 
anathemas. The ship will sail better 
and reach port sooner because of this 
good work. 

From these general views let us pass 
now to particulars. 

First: The world is making material 
progress, is growing in wealth. This may 
not seem real progress to those who think 
that poverty promotes virtue. But this 
is not true. Men may be virtuous in 
poverty, but not because of it. Poverty 
may keep us from the evils of idleness 
and luxury to which great wealth tempts 
its possessors. 

But the poverty which compels multi¬ 
tudes to exhaust their strength in toil 
for the bare necessities of life dulls and 
dwarfs the mind and unfits it for those 


20 Is the World Growing 

exercises which expand and elevate it. 
Men need leisure and freedom from toil 
and care in order to read and think and 
learn the truths which promote their 
material and moral well-being; and this 
they can not have without at least a mod¬ 
erate amount of wealth, and it is cause 
for rejoicing that the wealth of the world 
is increasing so rapidly, and that more 
has been added to it in the last century 
than in any five preceding centuries. 

It is true that the world’s wealth is not 
yet well distributed and is concentrated 
too much in comparatively few hands. 
But it must be created before it can be 
distributed, and the intelligence and energy 
which have produced it will find some 
way rightly to distribute it, so that every 
man may get his proper share. The laws 
of nature and of human nature are demo¬ 
cratic and unfriendly to monopolies, and 
slowly and surely are operating to equalize 
social conditions. 

Second: The world is improving in 
health. 

Science is showing us the laws of life, 
the causes of disease and the remedies. 


Worse or Better? 


21 


Many of the worst diseases, formerly fatal 
to multitudes and regarded as incurable, 
have been brought under control and are 
on the way to extinction. 

The plagues and pestilences which swept 
away millions, and depopulated cities 
and countries, have been banished from 
civilized nations. Ignorance, error, su¬ 
perstition and vice, causes of the worst 
diseases, are vanishing as the light of 
science and religion illumines the world. 
The average length of human life has been 
increased from fifty to a hundred per 
cent within a century; and this improve¬ 
ment in health helps all other kinds of 
improvement. 

As we become better acquainted with 
the laws of physiology and psychology, 
we learn that many mental and moral 
maladies have their roots in bad physical 
conditions, and call for sanitation and 
surgery more than for prisons and penal¬ 
ties. As our treatment of criminals and 
insane people becomes more scientific, 
it also becomes more humane, more Chris¬ 
tian, and more successful. Much that 
has been called depravity is disease, to 


22 Is the World Growing 


cure which science and religion must com¬ 
bine and are combining with results which 
justify and sanctify their co-operation. 

Third: The world is growing wiser. 

The time predicted when “many shall 
run to and fro and knowledge be increased’* 
has come. All the sciences are advancing 
faster than any mind can keep pace with 
them. We have learned more about the 
universe and its laws in the last hundred 
years than in all preceding time, and dis¬ 
covery is going on in all directions with 
increasing rapidity. 

Schools of all sorts, libraries and lab¬ 
oratories and facilities of every kind, for 
investigation and instruction, are multi¬ 
plying beyond all precedent and bringing 
to light the secrets of nature and the laws 
of mind and matter which, known and 
obeyed, make men wise to rule themselves 
and the world they inhabit. 

This progress of science is made pos¬ 
sible by our great wealth of which it is 
both cause and effect, and it is one of the 
good signs of our times that rich men are 
giving so much of their wealth for the 
education and enlightenment of mankind. 


Worse or Better? 


23 


Fourth: The world is growing better 
morally and religiously. 

No candid student of history can care¬ 
fully compare the present with the past 
and doubt this. 

A century ago, in our own country, the 
best of all countries, slavery, duelling, 
gambling, and intemperance flourished 
unabashed and almost unrebuked. In Puri¬ 
tan New England, at ministerial ordina¬ 
tions, church dedications, and religious 
conventions much of the expense was for 
strong drink, and it was not an uncommon 
thing for deacons and doctors of divinity 
to imbibe more than they could well 
manage. Jonathan Edwards was dis¬ 
missed from his parish of Northampton 
for rebuking immoralities which no Church 
would now tolerate. John Wesley was 
virtually banished from Oxford Univer¬ 
sity because he denounced the vice and 
ungodliness openly practiced there by 
candidates for the ministry in the An¬ 
glican Church. Three years ago nearly 
the same university conferred its highest 
honors on General Booth of the Salvation 
Army, for doing what Wesley did without 


24 Is the World Growing 


Wesley’s learning and logic, but none the 
less effectively on that account. An Eng¬ 
lish statesman of Wesley’s time, hearing 
a preacher say that, “If noblemen and 
gentlemen did not repent of their sins 
they would go to hell as surely as plain 
plebeians for their vulgar vices,” indig¬ 
nantly exclaimed, “How dare he preach 
a religion that interferes with the private 
lives of gentlemen!” 

Slavery and duelling are now dead, 
gambling is outlawed, intemperance is 
unfashionable, and over half of our country 
the traffic in intoxicating drinks is pro¬ 
hibited by law. Religion has become 
more practical; we have less theology and 
more religion. Less is said about the plan 
of salvation and the mysteries of the future 
life, and more is done to save men’s souls 
and bodies from the evils of the present life. 

In dealing with crime and criminals and 
all sorts of unfortunate people, science, 
common-sense, and religion are working 
together in ways that are more merciful 
and more helpful. We are learning that 
the true aim of law is not so much to pun¬ 
ish crime as to prevent it. 


Worse or Better? 


25 


When John Howard began his work 
of prison reform, the prisons were crowded 
with persons guilty of no crime but ina¬ 
bility to pay their debts. No one then 
seems to have thought of the stupidity, 
not to say cruelty, of such law. If a man 
could not pay his debts out of prison, 
how, in the name of common-sense, could 
he ever pay them in prison? At the same 
time prisons were pesthouses, foul and 
filthy and fatal to the lives of their un¬ 
fortunate inmates; and no man seems to 
have cared for their souls or bodies till 
John Howard, John Wesley, Silas Told, 
Elizabeth Fry, and others like them, be¬ 
gan to see and feel that the way to fol¬ 
low Christ is to visit the sick and the poor 
and the prisoners, to relieve their wants 
and woes, and help them up and out of 
their sins and miseries. 

The revival of religion in the eighteenth 
century gave birth to modern philan¬ 
thropy and humanitarianism. 

It preached and practiced justice and 
mercy to man as well as faith and obedi¬ 
ence to God; and the altruism of Him 
“who came not to be ministered unto but 




26 Is the World Growing 


to minister,” has since then been growing 
in his Church and in the world, and is 
the chief characteristic of present-day 
Christianity. 

The traditional ecclesiasticism which 
preceded it had no eye to pity and no 
arm to save. The crimes and cruelties 
and miseries of men evoked no compas¬ 
sion and got no help from a religion which 
lived by the letter which killeth and not 
in the spirit which giveth life; but when 
men born of the Spirit had the love of 
God shed abroad in their hearts, they be¬ 
gan to love their neighbors as themselves 
and went about doing good like their 
Master. 

Before this revival there were more 
than a hundred offenses for which men 
were hung, and they were hung without 
pity and followed to the gallows by an 
inhuman rabble to whom the cruel spec¬ 
tacle was a sort of holiday entertainment. 

Press gangs dragged innocent men into 
the army, and beat them brutally if they 
resisted. For minor offenses, for which 
small fines only are now amerced, men and 
women were tied to a cart’s tail and 


Worse or Better? 


2 7 


stripped and whipped through the streets 
like dogs. Indeed, dogs and dumb beasts 
generally are better treated now than 
many unfortunate human beings were 
then. Dog fighting, cock fighting, bull 
baiting, and the brutalities of pugilism 
were the popular amusements of the times. 
And these were the good old times when 
men were brave and women fair and mod¬ 
ern degeneracy had not begun. “Say 
not thou, Why were the former times bet¬ 
ter than these? for, concerning this, thou 
inquirest not wisely.” 

The enthusiasm of humanity is now 
making men merciful to one another, and 
even to the beasts that perish. Fraternal 
orders and organizations are multiplied 
to redress all wrongs and relieve all suf¬ 
fering. Hospitals and asylums for or¬ 
phans, for the aged, the blind, the deaf, 
the dumb, the insane, the defective and 
diseased in mind and body, are endowed 
and supported with an amount of charity 
never seen on earth before. Any great 
calamity by fire, flood, famine, pestilence, 
or earthquake evokes universal sympathy 
and succor. The earthquake in Italy a 


28 Is the World Growing 


year ago brought to its victims help from 
all countries; even battleships and their 
crews were sent there on this errand of 
mercy, the first time in history they were 
used to save and not destroy, and the 
best use ever made of them. 

The brotherhood of man is a fact con¬ 
fessed and confirmed by the consecration 
of thousands of men and women to lives 
of service and sacrifice for those whose 
only claim upon them is their need. The 
obligation of the rich to the poor, of the 
strong to the weak, of the educated to the 
ignorant, of the good to the bad, is a tru¬ 
ism which no one now dares to deny. 

The war spirit is dying and the spirit 
of fraternity growing in all lands. Sec¬ 
tarian controversies have almost disap¬ 
peared in the Churches. Co-operation 
and federation in Christian work at home 
and abroad is taking the place of the 
suicidal strife and waste of the past. 

This spirit of unity is in the world as 
well as in the Church. It has brought 
the discordant States of Germany to¬ 
gether in one great empire. It has made 
the weak, divided States of Italy into one 


Worse or Better? 


29 


powerful kingdom. It has made the jeal¬ 
ous, quarreling States of America one 
great Republic; and promises to make all 
nations one great Commonwealth—“the 
Federation of Man, the Parliament of the 
World.” 

The great missionary movement of our 
time is one effect of this growth of human 
fraternity. 

For the first half century of foreign 
missions they were barely tolerated by 
Christian governments and half of the 
Church questioned their utility. 

Not till Stanley found Livingstone in 
the heart of Africa and was converted by 
him, did the secular press begin to treat 
missionaries and their work fairly and 
respectfully. 

Now scholars, scientists, statesmen, the 
rulers of nations, men who control the 
commerce and business of the world, 
are beginning to honor them as the ad¬ 
vance agents of civilization as well as of 
Christianity. And their reflex influence 
on the Churches at home is not the least 
of the benefits they have bestowed. 

The Laymen’s Missionary Movement 


30 Is the World Growing 


shows that even in this time, when the 
commercial spirit is said to be so strong, 
men with vast business interests to care 
for are able and willing to give time and 
money and work without stint for the love 
of God and man, to evangelize the world 
in this generation. 

The Students’ Volunteer Movement has 
led thousands of the brightest and best 
minds among our educated young people 
to go to the front to serve and suffer and, 
if need be, die for the gospel; and thousands 
more in our schools and colleges are wait¬ 
ing to be sent on the same great errand. 
The heroic spirit in the Church is neither 
dead nor dying. The recent Boxer mas¬ 
sacres in China made manifest the fact 
that our missionaries and their converts 
have as much of the martyr spirit which 
makes men faithful unto death as any 
of the saints of past ages. And this hero¬ 
ism has given them success. The miracle 
of Pentecost has been repeated in modern 
missions in as marked a manner as in 
any of the instances recorded in the Acts 
of the Apostles. And not only in foreign 
fields but in the worst slums of our great 


Worse or Better? 


3i 


cities, men as far from God and goodness 
as the most depraved pagans are miracu¬ 
lously transformed into good men and 
good citizens by the same grace which 
made the gospel mighty at the first, and 
will make it mighty to the last. 

The millennium is not yet; evils enough 
are in sight to make pessimism plausible 
to those who see the evils only. In the 
Church, in society, in politics there is 
need of a revival of righteousness to cure 
the worldliness in the Church, the selfish¬ 
ness in society, and the crookedness in 
politics. Evil dies hard and will not be 
exorcised by rose water theories of evo¬ 
lution and progress. Human life never 
was and never will be a play, but a battle 
to be won only by valor and vigilance. 

This is a time when the energies of men 
for evil as well as for good are aroused 
to unwonted activity. The strenuous 
spirit of the age shows itself in the forces 
that corrupt as well as in those that re¬ 
form society. 

The same sun that warms the air, 
beautifies the earth, makes flowers bloom, 
birds sing, and the harvests grow, also 


32 Is the World Growing 


makes frogs croak, mosquitoes sting, brings 
snakes out of their holes, and makes ma¬ 
laria exhale from swamps and decaying 
vegetation. The intense activity of this 
stirring time animates the sons of Belial 
as well as the sons of God; and makes the 
impression on those who see only the sur¬ 
face that the armies of evil are advancing 
to victory. But, however strong and 
arrogant it may appear, wickedness is 
weakness. “I have seen the wicked in 
great power and spreading himself like a 
green bay tree, yet he passed away and 
lo, he was not; yea, I sought him, but he 
could not be found.” 

“Right is might since God is right, 

And right the day must win, 

To doubt would be disloyalty, 

To falter would be sin.” 

Much of our present spiritual apathy and 
inertia is due to conditions which are 
already beginning to change for the better. 

As a nation, we have had on our hands 
a tremendous task which has taken all 
our strength. To subdue the titanic 
forces of nature, to fell the forests, plough 


Worse or Better? 


33 


the prairies, drain the swamps, irrigate 
the deserts, open the mines, tunnel the 
mountains, bridge the rivers, build the 
cities, and bind together with steel high¬ 
ways all parts of this vast country and 
make homes here for a hundred millions 
of people, has taken a hundred years 
of hard work by the most energetic and 
industrious race of men. If it has ab¬ 
sorbed our thought and energy and de¬ 
veloped our secularity more than our 
spirituality, this was inevitable. But this 
work had to be done. Our physical wants 
are imperative; we must provide for our 
bodies in order to save our souls. But 
this preparatory work is largely completed, 
and the energy and intelligence expended 
in it can now be used in the greater work 
of conquering ourselves and the world for 
Christ. Having transformed a vast con¬ 
tinental wilderness into a garden of gods, 
we can now build here the city of God 
and make America the spiritual metropo¬ 
lis of Christendom, the chief base of the 
armies of light which are to evangelize 
the world. 

For this we have been providentially 
3 


34 Is the World Growing 


educated and prepared as no other nation 
has been. With all our worldliness, we 
are a Christian nation, the most Christian 
nation. 

In proportion to our population, we 
have more professed Christians than any 
other nation, and they are increasing 
numerically faster than our population, 
rapidly as it has grown. 

We give more money, send more mis¬ 
sionaries, and convert more heathen than 
any other nation, and we have only begun 
this great work. What we have already 
accomplished is presage and prophecy 
of what we may expect to do. 

The energy and intelligence which have 
made us so rich and powerful, consecrated 
to Christ, will fit us for this great work, 
and the other great nations will join us 
in it. The great powers, Great Britain, 
Germany, and the United States, are Chris¬ 
tian, Protestant, and missionary nations, 
doing most of the missionary work in the 
world. The twentieth century promises 
to be the century of peace, when the enor¬ 
mous expenses for armies and navies, no 
longer needed, will be used for the better- 


Worse or Better? 


35 


merit of the people at home and for the 
conversion of the nations abroad. The 
universal reign of the Prince of Peace is 
the logical and legitimate outcome of the 
moral and spiritual progress of mankind. 
The great forces which control society 
are becoming Christianized. The scoffing 
skepticism of the eighteenth century has 
no followers. Since Bradlaugh died in 
England, and Ingersoll in America, un¬ 
belief has had no tongue or pen potent 
enough to attract attention. The great 
minds of the nineteenth and twentieth 
centuries are men of faith. The histo¬ 
rians, Greene, Lecky, Bancroft, and Mot¬ 
ley; the poets, Tennyson, Browning, Long¬ 
fellow, Bryant, and Whittier; the scientists, 
Faraday, Agassiz, Pasteur, Lord Kelvin, 
and Sir Oliver Lodge; the novelists, Sir 
Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, Victor 
Hugo, Nathaniel Hawthorne; the states¬ 
men, Gladstone, Bismarck, Lincoln, Theo¬ 
dore Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan; 
the rulers of the great nations, the King 
of Great Britain, the Emperor of Germany, 
the President of the United States—all 
the men that influence the world most have 


36 Is the World Growing 


been or are nominally or really Chris¬ 
tian. 

The spirit of social service which is as¬ 
serting its supremacy everywhere is the 
Christian spirit which finds its greatest 
example in the cross of Christ. 

Jesus is the central figure in human his¬ 
tory and the greatest power on earth to¬ 
day. He alone is able to project Himself 
across the ages and be the contemporary 
of all generations. 

The greatest man before him was Julius 
Caesar, whose name and fame then filled 
the world. 

No secular historian mentions Jesus till 
fifty years after His death, when Tacitus 
gives Him a few half-contemptuous lines. 
Nineteen centuries later Caesar is almost 
forgotten, and another emperor seeks to 
revive interest in him. 

With the help of the best scholars in 
France, the Second Napoleon publishes a 
life of Caesar and, with all the prestige of 
its great subject and great author, it falls 
flat from the press; in all my travels I 
have seen only one copy of it. But the life 
of Jesus is found and read everywhere. 


Worse or Better? 


37 


More books are written about Him than 
about all the Caesars and all the con¬ 
querors of all time. When the new version 
of the New Testament was printed in 
England, one of our great newspapers had 
it cabled across the ocean, at great ex¬ 
pense, and published in a mammoth edi¬ 
tion read by millions of people. The 
first steamship that crossed the Atlantic 
after this brought a whole cargo of Testa¬ 
ments, millions of copies, which were all 
sold in advance before the ship arrived. 

The old story, forever new, has an im¬ 
mortal charm for men of all times and 
climes, and proves its divine origin by 
being everywhere the power of God unto 
salvation; and it is read, studied, under¬ 
stood, and appreciated more and more 
by increasing multitudes, because it brings 
God to men and men to God, by showing 
us Him in whom we see what God is and 
what man is to be. 

And because He is in the world, the 
living center and source of its highest 
life, the world is growing better. This is 
the best time this world has ever seen. 
In health and wealth, in knowledge and 


38 Is the World Growing 


virtue, in religion and philanthropy we 
are the most favored generation upon 
which the sun has shined. We are better 
fed, better clad, better taught, better 
governed, with better laws, better man¬ 
ners, and better religion than our ancestors 
had. 

Jesus Christ has not lived and suffered 
and died and risen in vain. “He shall not 
fail nor be discouraged till He have set 
judgment in the earth and the isles shall 
wait for His law.” Standing in the shadow 
of His cross, He said, “And I, if I be lifted 
up from the earth, will draw all men unto 
Me.” He has been lifted up and is draw¬ 
ing all men to Himself. From North and 
South, East and West, the nations are 
turning to Him as the great Deliverer. 
The day spring from on high is visiting 
all nations. “The light of the knowledge 
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus 
Christ” is banishing the world’s long night 
of sin and sorrow. All the mountains are 
beautiful with the feet of them that pub¬ 
lish salvation, and from the Church tri¬ 
umphant there comes to the Church mili¬ 
tant this great word of the great apostle: 


Worse or Better? 


39 


“Let this mind be in you which was 
also in Christ Jesus; who, being in the 
form of God, thought it not robbery to 
be equal with God; but made Himself 
of no reputation and took upon Him the 
form of a servant; and, being found in 
fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and 
became obedient unto death, even the 
death of the cross. Wherefore, God also 
hath highly exalted Him and given Him 
a name which is above every name; that 
at the name of Jesus every knee should 
bow of things in heaven and things in 
earth and things under the earth; and 
that every tongue should confess that 
Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God 


the Father.” 




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